The tendencies toward Paganism which the enthusiastic and exclusive study of the ancient classics produced among the Italian Humanists of the fifteenth century are so well known that it is natural to ask what was the attitude of the founder of Humanism toward the generally accepted religious beliefs of his day.
The question of the propriety of reading pagan works had agitated the Church from the first, and the views of the devout had varied greatly. There had always been distinguished leaders, like Augustine, who made due use of pagan learning and eloquence, and defended a discriminating study of the heathen writers; while others, among whom Gregory the Great was preëminent, had harshly condemned "the idle vanities of secular learning," for the reason "that the same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ."[1] Many timid churchmen were fearful, like Jack Cade, of those who talked of "a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian can endure to hear." In short, the effects produced upon the religious convictions by a study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Lucretius have always varied with the mental make-up, the maturity and surroundings, of the individual, just as nowadays a study of science may or may not influence the faith of the believer. In notable instances, scientific pursuits not only leave the student's religious system essentially unimpaired but may even serve to fortify a traditional form of theology. On the other hand, an absorbing interest in scientific investigation often produces religious indifference. In still other minds such research will arouse opposition to what comes to seem to them a vicious and degraded form of superstition. This opposition will vary from dignified but uncompromising negation to a frantic belligerency not unlike that of the ecclesiastical opponents of "poetry" in the middle ages.
Turning to Petrarch, we may at first be tempted to infer that his religious beliefs were in no way affected by his sympathetic study of pagan literature. His writings prove beyond a peradventure that he was a devout Catholic, even an ardent defender of orthodoxy. He composed several devotional works, unimpeachably sound in their teaching, as, for example, the tract upon True Wisdom, and his Penitential Psalms. He was deeply incensed by the defection of the young men who accepted the doctrines of Averroes, and prepared a refutation of their heresies, as we have seen.[2] And he was no exception to the rule, for there were few, if any, among the first generation of Humanists who affected the paganism characteristic of the later Renaissance.[3] But Petrarch not only refused to question the authority of the Church; he went much farther, and, in, theory at least, heartily accepted the prevalent ascetic ideals. He freely, acknowledges the superior perfection of the monastic life; it is, he feels, the only sure road to Heaven. In writing to Gherardo, who had become a Carthusian monk, he begs him not to despair of his salvation although, he still remains in the world. His sins, however great, are still finite, while the divine clemency upon which he relies is boundless.[4]
But such reflections as fill the letter from which we quote are, the writer explicitly tells us, not his own, for it is the pen of another self, a "monastic pen," which records them. He speaks truly; he had no real love for a consistent life of seclusion and maceration, yet when his spirit was heavy, when the vanity of earthly ambition was more than usually oppressive, he might long for the irresponsible routine of the monastery. Sometimes, too, he seems unconsciously to have confused a scholar's desire for leisure and retirement with the quite different claims of the cloister.[5]
[1] Ep., ix., 54.
[2] I.e., De Suiipsius et Multorum Ignorantia. See above, pp. [215], [216].
[3] Cf. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, vol. i., p. 1 sqq.
[4] Fam., x., 3.